Ryan McLean : Slightly Unconventional

My 5 Year Plan Towards Financial Freedom

It is my goal to be financially free in just 5 years. Now as you may know this is not exactly the ‘norm’ , you don’t see a lot of people retiring before they reach 30. In fact most people these days can’t even afford to retire when they reach 65. Did you know that the greatest fear in America today is not terrorism, or nuclear war, it is running out of money before they die. That is the number one fear.

Financial freedom doesn’t just happen, you can’t really accidentally become financially free. You need to decide you want to become financially free and you need to have a plan to get you there. Most people fail to retire early and fail to become financially free because they are always trying to make more money, they think that money is going to make them rich. Really it is not the amount of money you have, but it is the cashflow you can generate.

The Figure

The first step towards becoming financially free is deciding how much passive income you require to actually be financially free. What is the total of all of your expenses? When you find that out then you can start setting a plan to reach that goal income.

For some reason I don’t feel comfortable sharing my goal income with everyone. Closer friends I would be happy to tell, but on my blog I am a bit weary to tell. Lets just say we could become financially free off the average wage of one person. We currently live very simple lives and don’t need a lot to survive. Once I become financially free, then I will have the time and freedom to focus on becoming rich.

What is your figure? How much passive income do you need before you can become financially free?

The Plan

My plan is basic. It is not set out in stone, and it doesn’t have all of the details mapped out. Basically I know where I am, I know where I want to be and I know the vehicle I am using to get there.

My plan is this:

Build businesses and then use those businesses to invest in real estate. The income from the real estate will fund my financial freedom.

I have worked out that I only need to own 8 bottom of the barrel properties in order to successfully become financially free. So my plan is for my wife and I to both work part time to pay the bills, and then I also work part time on building my business. When the business starts generating an income, then I will reinvest back into the business to grow it even more. Then when the business has enough income I will use that money as a deposit on real estate properties. I will buy as many as I can afford with the income I receive.

The start is the hardest part. As soon as my business starts generating some income and I buy my first property it will get easier. Instead of struggling to save money my first investment property will help fund my second, and then my second will help even more to fund the third and so on. It grows upon its self, the hardest part is getting the ball rolling.

The Business

This is where I am starting. I know enough to invest in real estate now but I don’t have the capital. So I am building a business so that I can get the capital to invest.

My business plan is very simple. I don’t have all the details yet, and I have decided exactly what my product is going to be, but the business model is tested and proven.

Basically the plan is to build an email subscriber list through Aweber. I have created a site, www.richacademy.com, and I am using this website to gather people’s name and email address. My goal is to earn $60,000 per year from my business, and this would be easy to do with a list of 60,000 people. So my goal over the next 5 years is to collect the contact details of 60,000 people.

I am marketing my list through article submission databases. I am starting with www.ezinearticles.com and then the articles that prove successful I will take to other article databases like www.articlesbase.com and www.goarticles.com. I have just started doing this and it has proven very successful. With just 100 articles (most which I have taken from the archives of my old blog Smarter Wealth) I am getting between 2-6 submissions per day. My goal is to write 1,000 articles, and by submitting them to multiple databases get my 60,000 subscribers within 5 years.

I will then make money by marketing products through my list. I already have one product which is an 8 week financial boot camp course. Everytime someone signs up for my newsletter they are redirected to my sales page. These sales cover my business expenses and it is passive income, the course runs by itself. The end goal is to create an online financial training membership site. I want to have memberships last about 6 months and charge a monthly fee. I have studied a lot about finance and I have spend over $10,000 on my financial education. I am also looking to team up with other people to create a joint venture for this membership site. But that is a little bit down the road. As my list grows, my income will grow.

The list is automatic. The articles I write automatically market my website, when people sign up for my list emails that I have already written are automatically sent out to my subscribers. Eventually the emails will automatically market my membership site, and will automatically market other products. It is a lot of work at the moment but eventually I plan for it to run without my input. My articles will all be written, so will my emails, my products will all be created, the marketing, sales and delivery of my products will all be automatic. Then I will have a lot of time to research property and to find great investments for my money.

Property

My goal is to invest in positive cashflow property. I want to pay a 5-20% deposit on each property I buy. After my deposit is paid I want the rent to completely cover my expenses, with a little bit left over. Each year rent will go up, as will the price of my property and I will be able to leverage the equity to buy more property. I need to own 8 properties outright in order to be financially free. But because I have a time limit of 5 years it will probably be easier for me to own 10-15 properties that I still have mortgages on but that generate a good passive income. By leveraging the banks money each year I will get richer, because rents will go up but my major cost (the mortgage repayments) will go down. So even when I am financially free and I stop working I will be getting richer each year.

What’s Your Plan?

That is my plan to be financially free in 5 years. What are your goals and your plans?



2 responses to “My 5 Year Plan Towards Financial Freedom”

  1. Do you really think you will get a free offer to make thousands in the mail randomly?!?!?

  2. “I don’t feel comfortable sharing my goal income with everyone. Closer friends I would be happy to tell, but on my blog I am a bit wearywary to tell.”

    Funny, I’m exactly the opposite, and I’m guessing the majority of PF bloggers feel the same, the anonymity of the web makes it easier to discuss personal situations (I’ll be starting to share mine soon), whereas with friends it can get a bit weird to talk about money like that.

    Interesting entry, though. It’s a good approach, the secret is finding positive cashflow properties. I found a couple this year, but they were all in pretty rough shape and I decided I wasn’t comfortable becoming a slumlord, it seemed wrong to profit off keeping people in such poor homes.

    I’m interested to know how are you going with your debt, and will you be looking to pay that off before you start buying properties?

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